Assesses the methodological approaches and best practices of church planting among Jewish communities. Students will analyze and evaluate particular historical case studies, and propose a theory of practice for church planting that integrates the following: Biblical foundations; ecclesiology; cultural competency in terms of Christian-Jewish relationships; personal spiritual reflection detailing God’s calling and sending to the church planting vocation.
Romans 1:16 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” This course addresses the need for Missional University students to reclaim the place of the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ, in terms of church planting, among Jewish individuals, communities and populations. Jesus’ Great Commission to the church began with a call to make disciples “In Jerusalem and Judea” (among the Jews) as well as to the “ends of the earth” and today’s global mission must continue to seek and to save what was lost among God’s chosen race. Students taking this course may be called to cross-cultural mission work, or they may be pastors in urban areas where there are established Jewish communities. Students will study church planting among the apostles and in Acts; they will learn about the history—for better and for worse—of the church’s activities among Jews; and they will discover that there are seemingly insurmountable cultural and social barriers but that, with God, all things are possible in the future of church planting.
at the graduate level students will engage Jewish people
This course studies the way the church was instituted and established by Jesus among Jewish people and how the church grew as recorded in the Bible.
The starting point for this course is Jesus’ Missional Mandate to His church to preach the Gospel to “Jerusalem and Judea” then “to the ends of the earth” but, as Romans 1:16 states, “First to the Jew.”
Students will develop an ecclesiology and theology of church planting that necessarily acknowledges, understands and explains the place of church planting among Jewish people.
Students will gain a competency of the distinctive Jewish faith and culture in order to appreciate the ethnic, social, historical and religious values from a social-scientific and comparative religious perspective.
Students will evaluate the church’s record of church planting, past, present and future in order to propose a “best practices” methodology, praying for opportunities to implement a theory of practice.
At the undergraduate level students in this course will explore and discover the cultural differences between Jewish and Christian people
